October 31, Nairobi — The U.S. Envoy to Sudan, Tom Perriello, accused the Sudanese authorities affiliated with the army of blocking or delaying the arrival of 90 percent of emergency relief.
In a post on social media site X, Perriello said that last month, Sudan’s Humanitarian Aid Commission (HAC) only allowed 10 percent of humanitarian supplies in Port Sudan to reach people in desperate need of food and medicine. He said that 6.5 million people in Sudan urgently need food to survive and 25 million overall need emergency humanitarian assistance.
This is the second time this month that Perriello has accused the Sudanese military authorities of obstructing the arrival of humanitarian aid. On October 21, also in a post on X, Perriello said the commission’s “bureaucratic barriers and delays” prevented seven million Sudanese people from receiving emergency food and medicine.
“The HAC must do more to facilitate UN and other humanitarian actors’ access to all parts of Sudan,” he said. “Starvation cannot be a weapon of war.”
Meetings on Sudan Crisis
Perriello will travel to Kenya, Uganda, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt starting on Wednesday for meetings on the crisis in Sudan, the U.S. State Department said in a statement. He will meet with Sudanese civil society leaders, host government officials, and multilateral leaders to discuss humanitarian access, civilian protection, and efforts to end the war.
“The Special Envoy will emphasize the need for immediate humanitarian access into and within all regions of Sudan, the importance of civilian protection, the urgency of all efforts to end the war, and the U.S. government’s continued commitment to supporting a transition to civilian governance,” the statement said.